"I had this issue, and it seems to be caused by some display-related Steam Cloud settings that were created when I first played the game on a different PC. Both machines were running Win7, but the other machine has a different graphics card, and a different native resolution.

I turned Steam Cloud off under Updates in Properties, and was able to start the game fine. Then, exit the game, turned Steam Cloud back on, and everything appears to be fine since!"

Don't you hate it when the first thing anyone says is, "Check your drivers!"?

This problem is more commonly caused by your monitor's failure to display a certain resolution. Put the game in windowed mode before wasting your time downloading drivers that probably automatically inform you of when you need an update.